Random musings on the world at large through the eyes of a quiltmaker. My motto: Make the quilt and then paint the bedroom!

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Blue

I don't think of blue as my favorite color. In truth, as I was growing up, blue was kinda off-limits for me. I was the brown-eyed child sandwiched between two blue-eyed sisters. If either Mary Frances or Elisabeth wore blue, they looked terrific. I wasn't quite sure what my favorite color was...until I met deep purple. It was the crush on purple when I was thirteen that inspired me to paint my whole bedroom that color. Whereupon Mom nixed the idea, had the purple paint re-mixed with white, and said I could leave the wall not visible from the door purple but the other walls had to fade to the new lavender color.

But like lots of folks, blue--as in blue jeans-- is part of my Woodstock generation's cultural DNA.

The color blue comes up all the time in my quilts. Purple has faded into the distant past. The one sampler quilt I made in purple is still a quilt top and will likely never get finished. So here's to blue in all its shades. From deep indigo to twilight blue, to haze and sky and faded grey-blue on our house.

All my dishes are various shades of blue because my theory is that even an all-white meal like eggs, cream gravy, and white grits looks appetizing against the color. FYI: the dark red bowl pictured in the dish drainer is used only for serving green beans and for salad, again because the color contrast is visually pleasing.

The miniature hexagon quilt was made from fabrics in a line called Victorian Blues that I did for Michael Miller in 2002.

Must be that I think of blue as a neutral--it often appears in my quilts as background. Making the Bethlehem Star quilt below got two ticks off my bucket list: the quilt is a central Star variation and is completely hand-made: hand-pieced, hand quilted, and hand bound.

By continuing to do sashiko, it looks as though I will be swimming in blue for some time. This piece is a shimaco or sampler book page overlaid with asinoha (hemp leaf) stitching.

This wall hanging-size quilt I just finished is called Nantucket Spin and the original design was by Laura Gilvin from Studioe fabrics. I pieced it and then did some messing around with the borders. Machine quilted by Vicky Garner.

And of course a blue-eyed kitten on another quilt top can end this posting nicely.

I can relate! I wasn't ever allowed pink. My dark haired dark eyed sister got pink while the two blond blue eyed girls got blue or green. I love pink now and found I really look great in it! I love pink in my quilts, too, and find blue to be too boring for me. (Sorry!)